The pattern has sharpened. It was never chance, nor madness, nor the ordinary hand of a killer. Each life ended in the very place where its power was strongest. Colgrave, among his ledgers; Ellory, at his altar; Rendell, in his parlor of justice; Gorham, within the house that tilted to bow before gallows. Each victim is a stone removed from the wall of corruption. The structure weakens.

Why then was I called? Why am I left alive to trace the outline of these events? The keys sit before me, each one heavy beyond its iron. They rest like judgments passed upon my desk, and when the candle burns low they appear to shift, aligning themselves into an order I do not comprehend.

I returned to the first key tonight. I turned it in my hand and saw a flaw within the metal, a crack like lightning frozen mid-strike. And in the mirror above my hearth I thought I saw the same flaw within my chest, as though I too had been marked.

Inspector Dray warns me to rest, but he does not understand. Rest is not permitted. The silence follows me into sleep. I wake to the tolling of bells that no church claims. Last night they struck thirteen, though no tower in London knows such a number. The sound was not heard by Dray, only by me.

When I left my rooms this morning, I found another envelope upon the stoop. The paper smelled of the river. No seal, no signature. The note inside: Harrow, stop me. The letters had not been written but cut into the page, as though the quill had been a blade.

I have walked these streets for years, through blood and treachery, through lies and betrayals. But I have never felt so tightly bound to a case as I do now. It is as though the leash is around my own throat, drawing me closer with each death.

I suspect, with a certainty that chills me, that my patron is none other than the quarry. That Grathok himself summoned me. That I am not meant to destroy him, but to bear witness until the end.

Why does he require a witness? Why me? Perhaps because I still cling to logic. Perhaps because someone must carry the record. Or perhaps because the inheritance of his curse requires a man who thinks himself incorruptible.

I write this deposition for the Guild, though I do not believe they will ever read it. If these words survive, let it be known that Nathaniel Harrow understood too late that a hunt can be a snare, and that some contracts cannot be broken once the ink has dried.

—Nathaniel Harrow

Chapter XII: Deposition of Nathaniel Harrow

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